Peck's Compendium of Fun eBook

too small for you, around your neck, put on vest and
coat, and liver pad and lung pad and stomach pad,
and a porous plaster, and a chemise shirt between
the two others, and rub on some liniment, and put a
bunch of keys and a jack-knife and a button hook,
and a pocket-book and a pistol and a plug of tobacco
in your pockets, so they will chafe your person, and
then go and drink a few whiskey cocktails, and walk
around in the sun with tight boots on, sis, and then
you will know what a man’s dress is.

Come to figure it up, it is about an even thing, sis,—­isn’t
it?

THOSE STEP LADDERS!

There has got to be a law passed to punish the hardware
dealers for selling those step ladders that shut up
like a jack-knife. A Ninth Street woman got onto
one the other afternoon when it looked as though there
was going to be a frost, to take her ivies down and
carry them in the house. We don’t care
how handsome a woman is naturally, you put a towel
around her head and put her up on a step ladder about
seven feet high, with a tomahawk in her left hand,
trying to draw a big nail out of a post on a veranda,
and she looks like thunder. This woman did.
Her husband tried to get her to let him do the work,
but she said a man never knew how to do anything,
anyway. So he sat down on the steps to see how
it would turn out. She said afterwards that he
kicked the ladder, but however that may be, there
was an earthquake, and when he looked up the air was
filled with calico, toweling, striped stockings, polonaise,
trailing arbutus, red petticoats, store hair and step
ladder. He said the step ladder struck the veranda
last, but as he picked her off of it, it seemed as
though it must have lit first. He said the step
ladder must have kicked up. In coming down she
run one leg through the baby wagon, and the other through
some flower pots, and a boy who was passing along
said he guess she had been to the turning school.

WONDERS OF THE STAGE.

There is no person in the world who is easier to overlook
the inconsistencies that show themselves on the stage
at theatres than we are, but once in a while there
is something so glaring that it pains us. We
have seen actors fight a duel in a piece of woods far
away from any town, on the stage, and when one of
them fell, pierced to the heart with a sword, we have
noticed that he fell on a Brussels carpet. That
is all wrong, but we have stood it manfully.

[Illustration: BEHIND THE SCENES.]

We have seen a woman on the stage who was so beautiful
that we could be easily mashed if we had any heart
left to spare. Her eyes were of that heavenly
color that has been written about heretofore, and her
smile as sweet as ever was seen, but behind the scenes,
through the wings, we have seen her trying to dig
the cork out of a beer bottle with a pair of shears,
and ask a supe, in harsh tones, where the cork-screw
was, while she spread mustard on a piece of cheese,
and finally drank the beer from the bottle, and spit
the pieces of cork out on the floor, sitting astride
of a stage chair, and her boot heels up on the top
round, her trail rolled up into a ball, wrong side
out, showing dirt from forty different stage floors.